The general packet radio services/universal mobile telecommunications system (GPRS/UMTS) is an evolution of the global system for mobile communications (GSM) standard to provide packet switched data services to GSM mobile stations. Packet-switched data services are used for transmitting chunks of data or for data transfers of an intermittent or bursty nature. Typical applications for third generation partnership project (3GPP) packet service include Internet browsing, wireless e-mail, and credit card processing, etc. FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating typical 3GPP packet architecture. Referring to FIG. 1, user equipment (UE) 101 is communicatively coupled to a radio network controller (RNC) 102 of a radio access network (RAN) 103. In order to access other networks such as Internet 107 and/or operator services node 108, UE 101 has to go through 3GPP packet core network 106. Typically, 3GPP packet core network 106 includes a serving GPRS support node (SGSN) 104 and a gateway GPRS support node (GGSN) 105. The support node SGSN and gateway node GGSN relay communications between a user terminal (or source mobile station) and a destination.
Note that typically, there will be multiple SGSNs associated with a GGSN, multiple RNCs associated with a SGSN, and multiple UEs associated with an RNC in a hierarchical structure (not shown). Thus, when traffic from the UEs increases, the traffic imposed on higher level nodes (e.g., SGSN and/or GGSN) in the hierarchical structure will be exponentially increased. Based on an analysis of mobile broadband data traffic patterns, a majority of traffic from UEs is Internet bound traffic, which does not benefit from session anchoring in a traditional mobile packet core. Making the Internet bound traffic traverse the SGSN and GGSN uses SGSN/GGSN resources and will add unnecessary delays to the Internet traffic. With the increase in mobile broadband traffic, the built-in hierarchy in the existing architecture results in more investment in SGSNs, GGSNs, and the transmission network from a RAN to a core network without exploiting the nomadic and Internet nature of traffic.
The decision to bypass the packet core network can be made when user first establishes the session with mobile network, as described in co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/415,853, filed Mar. 31, 2009, which is incorporated by reference herein in its entirety. However, there are some situations where the initial user request was for the traffic requiring low bandwidth and the traffic is not offloaded, which goes through the packet core network. Subsequently when the session requests broadband traffic, such broadband traffic is still routed through the packet core network regardless the change of required bandwidth or other routing parameters.